Album reviews: Django Django | Queens of the Stone Age

Django Django: Off Planet (Because Music) ****

Queens of the Stone Age: In Times New Roman (Matador) ****

Far From Saints: Far From Saints (Ignition Records) ***

Django Django’s latest interplanetary odyssey, released in four parts from February onwards, has now landed in its entirety as an eminently danceable double album bursting with the quartet’s signature sonic diversity.

Rather than each track containing multitudes as before, the songs are their own little universes, a good number populated by guest artists known and unknown (Yuuko was discovered by Googling “Japanese rapper”) but all emanating from Dave McLean’s library of sounds created during lockdown, developed with his bandmates in London and polished in his Wester Ross home.

Part one alone vaults from the beefy bass and dreamy vocals of Wishbone to soulful house banger Complete Me, with guest vocals by Self Esteem, via the foreboding synths and martial drums of Osaka to beseeching rap track Hands High and the astral ambience of Lunar Vibrations.

The spare, hypnotic techno of Back 2 Back is a rare example of restraint in arrangement; elsewhere, the band cannot resist adding jazzy flute and Clanger-like whistles to expansive electro number Squid Inc.

Jack Penate delivers one of the strongest guest vocals, floating gracefully over the hands-in-the-air celebration of No Time. There is more of that Tame Impala-style airy summer pop on A New Way Through but elsewhere Dumdrum evokes Sparks in their hectic disco era and Slipstream the Giorgio Moroder-influenced propulsion of early Simple Minds, pushing the band into new but welcome territory.

The standard remains high across Off Planet’s 80 minutes, with some highlights saved until the end. Black Cadillac is quite the journey, blending gothic dubby bass and Afropunk sax trills but Django Django still have enough creative juice left in the tank to go out on the hooky Gazelle with its loping piano pattern and woozy strings.

Hold that joyful thought, as Queens of the Stone Age are about to suck it out the room with their dark, intense new album. Turns out the sleek, Mark Ronson-produced Villains was a false dawn, but lockdown and loss do have a tendency to pull the rug from under the party.

In recent years, frontman Josh Homme has suffered multiple bereavements, including the premature deaths of his muso pals Taylor Hawkins and sometime QOTSA vocalist Mark Lanegan, not to mention a spiralling custody battle with ex-wife Brody Dalle of The Distillers.

The song titles on In Times New Roman are replete with sardonic wordplay but Homme plays it pretty straight with the lyrics. In contrast to the relative vulnerability of Foo Fighters’ But Here We Are, Homme channels his anger into his customary terse, tough guitar riffola and through vocals which deliberately stray into sneering rock operatics – call it the Iggy attitude, which has thoroughly rubbed off on Homme across their recent exultant collaborations.

What the Peephole Say is as old school punk as Queens have ever been, revving up to a conclusion high on tightly coiled energy, Sicily encompasses dynamic, symphonic rock and distorted bluesy twang and nine-minute album climax Straight Jacket Fitting is a right ruckus, opining “the world she don’t need saving apart from you and me and our misbehaving” before finally exhaling on an acoustic psych rock coda.

Far From Saints is a lockdown-birthed roots trio formed by Stereophonics frontman Kelly Jones with Patty Lynn and Dwight Baker from US outfit The Wind and The Wave, providing ample opportunities for harmonies and Americana flavours.

Their self-titled debut plays out exactly as you might expect with a mix of country balladry, southern soul inflections, winsome vanilla pop, orchestral embellishments and the acoustic roots rock which best suits Jones’s raspy voice, accompanied effectively on Gonna Find What’s Killing Me with the soulful pulse of Hammond organ.

CLASSICAL

Isata Kanneh-Mason: Childhood Tales (Decca) ****

Isata Kanneh-Mason, the senior member of Nottingham’s famous musical family, plays to her strengths on her latest album, Childhood Tales. There's a fresh, virtuosic innocence to her pianism that perfectly suits the inventive simplicity of Mozart’s Variations on “Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman” (better known to us as “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”), the inoffensive whimsy of Dohnányi’s concerto-style diversions on the same theme (Variations on a Nursery Song), the picture book sketches of Debussy’s Children’s Corner, and the deliciously crafted sentimentality of Schumann’s Kinderszenen. Kanneh-Mason is at her most rounded and assured in the Dohnányi, interacting vivaciously and mischievously with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Domingo Hindoyan. Friendly engagement informs her solo performances, a tonal directness that conveys profundity, even if her lyrical articulation occasionally lacks the necessary fluidity. But there is unmistakable charm, especially with Debussy and Schumann, that is symptomatic of the pianist’s warm personality, and that’s a winner. Ken Walton

JAZZ

Pat Metheny: Dream Box (BMG Modern Recordings) ****

Pat Metheny’s “dream boxes” are his much-loved, hollow-bodied electric guitars and here the ever-questing master guitarist forsakes his expansive band format for these nine intimately laid down solo tracks, recorded over the past few years and “rediscovered” on his laptop. These generally double-tracked pieces are meditative, often tender ballads, their vibe exemplified by the gently ascending chords of his opener, The Waves Are Not the Sea, the unhurried deliberations of From the Mountains or the gentle rise and fall of Clouds Can’t Change the Sky. Mainly his own compositions, there are also three covers including dreamy deliberations on Russ Long’s Never Was Love and the fond bossa sashaying of the Bonfá-Maria standard Morning of the Carnival. Those looking for fireworks may be disappointed, but Metheny describes these tracks simply as “moments in time” and at their best they do make time stand still. Jim Gilchrist

Album reviews: Django Django | Queens of the Stone Age | Far From Saints